C.W. NEVIUS -- Raiders Rush to The Dance

Published 4:00 am, Monday, November 6, 1995

1995-11-06 04:00:00 PDT Cincinnati -- THE RAIDERS had it choreographed right down to the end-zone dances for yesterday's matchup in the chill and gloom of Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium. With an extra week to plan, the Raiders dusted off a strategy they hadn't run successfully in the last few game -- the crunching ground game.

"We were bullheaded on that today," said assistant head coach Joe Bugel. "We were going to run that play no matter what."

It all worked to perfection -- at least at first. Halfback Harvey Williams rang up 62 yards in the first quarter and 73 in the half. For a guy who has been held to 24 yards from scrimmage in the last two games, that's some kind of major improvement, and Williams was grateful.

"My offensive line was great," he said. "I call them the Big Nasties. My little girl could have rushed for 100 yards today."

And don't think the Big Nasties didn't enjoy themselves. There are two types of plays for the big fellows: 1) back up and take huge rations of abuse while pass- blocking and 2) do what they did yesterday.

"People ask me if I like being an offensive guard," said Steve Wisniewski. "I tell them if I could do anything else, play any other sport or position, I would. Running those types of plays we did today is the only fun I get."

Williams finished with 134 yards on 24 attempts, right up there with the 160 yards he gained against Seattle earlier this year when he set a career mark.

It all worked out exactly as Bugel diagrammed it. As center Dan Turk said, "When you spend an hour a day during the off week working on running the ball, you expect to be running the ball."

Williams not only had a chance to perfect his cutbacks and broken-field moves, he also joined Tim Brown, Rocket Ismail and Derrick Fenner in an informal meeting of the cast of "Dance Fever." When Williams blew into the end zone on a two-yard run, he and the others formed a kind of conga line for a new end-zone dance.

"Rocket started that," said Williams. "I saw him doing it the other day. We had a bet that whoever got into the end zone first was going to do it, and I won."

Maybe so, but Brown wasn't about to be left out. When he caught a Jeff Hostetler pass in front of reserve cornerback Corey Sawyer and swerved past free safety Darryl Williams to complete a 34-yard touchdown play, he intended to get some dancing in, too.

The problem was that Brown had spent too much time practicing to be denied.

"On the flight out here we watched four hours of that show 'Martin,' " said Brown, referring to the Fox Network sitcom starring Martin Lawrence. "He did it in that, and we said we were going to do it when we scored."

At that point, why not dance? The Raiders were up, 14-0, they had outgained the Bengals, 172-12, and there was not a hint of trouble in River City.

That was the good news.

The only fly in the ointment, and it's a small one, is that once they got the Bengals down, they showed an un-Raiderlike lack of a killer instinct.

The Cincinnati 11 are no world beaters. Yesterday's defeat kept alive a streak of 30 consecutive games in which the Bengals have not defeated a team with a winning record. Now 3-6, they came into the game beaten up, including the loss of leading tackler Steve Tovar, the middle linebacker.

The Bengals have but one plan to win, which may have been best expressed by Raiders coach Mike White, who noted Cincinnati's similarity to a dinner guest who doesn't know when to go: "They hang around."

The two biggest Bengal gains came on a 23-yard pass-interference call and a 26-yard fake punt, the kind of gimmick you'd expect from a desperate team.

The problem was, after racking up the two quick touchdowns, the Raiders bogged down and had only two field goals the rest of the way as they staggered home with a 20-17 win. Hostetler threw an interception; the Raiders had only four second-half first downs rushing, and James Jett dropped a touchdown pass in the end zone.

Throw in a couple of the inevitable ill- advised penalties, and this game wound up much closer than it should have been. Just imagine what might have happened if the officials had flagged those dancin' Raiders for excessive celebrating in the end zone.

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